So another thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about on the house front is having a fire. At the moment we have rather an ugly ten year old gas fire. It’s not pretty, it smells a bit funny and it’s a long way from the crackling log fire that I dream about. The question is, what to do with it? Our first plan was just to rip it out, give us a bit more room in the lounge and be done with it, but then we started looking at fireplaces and stoves and it seems we do have some options.

The first thing we could do is to replace the gas fire with another, a bit more modern (I like this marble surround too):

Gas fire with marble surround

OR we could go uber modern, and go for something completely different. This, believe it or not, is an electric fire with an LED flame:

BUT I know you need a chimney for this, and we don’t have one. Another house near us has solved this by attaching an enormous metal flue to the side of their property, but it doesn’t look too pretty. Has anyone else seen any creative ideas for getting a fire into a modern house? I’d love to hear from you if you have!

Hi Becky, We have the same problem, no chimney breast. and no gas in the lounge. We had a marble fire surround made locally and put an electric fire with smoke effect in. It looks OK, but I would prefer a wood burner. You can get gas ones with the log effect which look pretty lifelike. Do you find that you get ideas (the homemaking kind:-)) popping into your head at the oddest times?